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This is one of the needlessly long scenes you'll face in the game; keep in mind that, while there's an option to make dialogue text appear faster, there's no such option for character animations, and cutscenes cannot be skipped (it's an old game after all). So enjoy watching Rena walking back and forth while the others just stand there looking at her and saying nothing.

Claude feels confident of his strength (i.e. he's gained enough levels), so he decides to rest at the Lacour inn: you can actually spend all the time you want around the world, and the Tournament will always be "the day after" (it's just a commodity for the player, so that s/he doesn't have to worry about time elapsing, I wouldn't do without it in most JRPGs). Claude seems excited enough about the Tournament, but Rena is the one who's the most nervous; but only Celine can figure out why, Claude is either too dumb or too focused on the Tournament to understand.

That said, Rena IS a bit weird, just look at these two screens:


Yeah, Rena, your mother really worries too much about you; she shouldn't have tried to stop you from going to the Shingo forest. After all, if an interstellar traveler equipped with a deadly Phase Gun hadn't shown up right that instant, and if he hadn't had enough courage and will to save you, you would only have been raped by a giant gorilla!

Parents can be such a hassle...

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...and that's it, he doesn't say anything else after that. All Private Actions start (and end) with a short scene where one random character says something (there's a few exceptions with more elaborate scenes), and then everybody enters (and exits) town. We're getting out of Lacour here, and Claude doesn't seem to have anything interesting to say. The best part about it is that Rena and Celine turn towards him and listen.

We're getting out of town to slay some monsters and get experience before the Tournament: I found out that I'm seriously underleveled this time, and I've already bitten the dust at the semifinals. And, contrarily to what I wrote in an earlier post, you don't get a Game Over if you lose, you just don't get some important prizes (the Sharp Sword!); plus, you get to witness a scene in which Claude makes a nuisance of himself by running to Dias after he's won (obviously), trying to put out some words and pathetically failing at it.

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I'm not exactly familiar with that way of saying, although I remember hearing that in a film. Too bad the capitalized 'red' stands out too much.

Our group seems to have completely forgotten about their mission, and they're just worrying about having a good time; after finding a sponsor for Claude (a creepy woman selling rare weapons, fierce battles and dripping blood seem to excite her at the mere thought), the party is informed that they can all stay at the inn for free. For now, you can go anywhere you like, and possibly fight some random battles to get more experience and techniques for the Tournament. Be warned though that once you decide to rest at the inn you won't be able to get out of Lacour until the tournament is over; also, if I remember correctly, you won't be able to save the game during this whole time.

One thing I found out during this replay is that you can go to the fighting arena beforehand, and and Claude will ask about Dias registering for the Tournament: he'll get a negative answer.

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Rena, that doesn't make sense! I should remember you that you're the youngest of the group.
Scratch that, the whole story sequence in Lacour Castle has an awful script for Claude and Rena.

Claude gets his way and registers for the Tournament of Arms, and now they're off to find a weapon shop who shall sponsor him. The game makes sure the player knows that by making the characters repeat it more times than necessary, thus making the script even worse than it was. Rena seems a bit concerned about Claude and Dias fighting.

I thought it was worth mentioning a couple of game-play things at this point:

• In the Tournament Claude has to fight one-on-one battles without resting in-between fights; the equipment and items he can use for all these battles depends on the sponsor you choose (and you get to keep the equipment after the tournament). I'm sure you can lose one battle (not counting the final one), but I think any more losses will result in a 'Game Over'
• At this point in the game you can recruit a new character in Linga, and if you do you'll have one more spectator for the battles; but since I don't think any of the added lines of dialogue are funny, I'll do that later (this is also because I hope to recruit another character first)
  

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Oh really, Claude!? Wow, I didn't know there was a Tournament being held here in Lacour! I mean, how could I possibly tell, after seeing all those people around Lacour talking about the Tournament of Arms?
To be a bit more fair to Claude, if the player doesn't bother talking to anyone, goes straight to the King and gets right back out of the castle, s/he may have overlooked the event. But who plays an RPG like that anyway? They could have bothered with some alternative line for Claude, just to make him sound less retarded (not that it would get a lot better anyway).

Be prepared, here comes Claude & Rena part 2! If you haven't been set off by their unnecessarily complicated relationship already, you should be soon enough. The group is sort of stuck: they won't be able to have an audience with the king anytime soon. Our journey could use a deviation to Linga, where we might find someone who can decipher the ancient writings found in the Cross Cave (however, if you try that, you'll find out that the only linguist available is off to watch the Tournament), but Claude seems to have something else on his mind. He was able to fight off hordes of monsters up to here, without relying on his phase gun, so he feels a lot more confident on his physical strength than he was before. The chance of dueling with Dias at the Tournament is too tempting (his motive? Probably jealousy, but we can't be sure). Fortunately, this sudden spurt of sportsmanship by Claude may not be without advantages: they said that the winner of the Tournament of Arms could get enough visibility to have an audience with the king right away... Yeah, you guessed it, Claude can't win, or else it would be too easy, wouldn't it?

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This isn't really funny, but Star Ocean 2 has a good deal of things like this: people whose behaviour closely resembles the one commonly found nowadays, especially when it comes to tourists. I remember that on the second planet there's a guy staying at a hotel, and he promptly states that he's going to take with him the hotel's consumables (towels, soap, slippers and the like) when quitting his stay, which is quite a common practice.

Lacour Castle is open to visitors on the days of the Tournament of Arms. Claude and his friends go straight to the throne room, even though they said they couldn't have an audience, only to find this group of tourists, apparently from all kind of places, having a tour of the castle. The king's room upstairs is inaccessible, and in the basement there's a cat-eared brat who can't stand the crowd getting in places where they shouldn't; he's also got blue hair, go figure...
But wait, cat-ears? Or whatever animal those ears belong to - he's the only one on Expel like that; I'm pretty sure his parents don't have them either. Later on you may find out that he's a Fellpool (a race you can find in the first Star Ocean), so I guess he may even have a tail. However, all the people around him seem more concerned with his genius and bad character, rather than his weird appearance; now that I think about it, even Rena, who has those long pointy ears, doesn't seem to bother the people of Arlia. Maybe it's just a message against racism. Or am I reading too much into it?

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New continent, different dialects, I guess? The most peculiar aspect of the Lacour accent is the absence of interrogatives. Just kidding, I don't think it happens often, but it's funny nonetheless.

All the weapon shops in town (there's four of them) can't sell you weapons because of the tournament: the rule is that entrants need to find a shop that's going to provide them with the necessary equipment for the battles, effectively sponsoring them in hopes of getting more publicity. As Rena would later say, to some people the Tournament of Arms is just a big gimmick to make money; and it seems to work wonders, if we look at the number of people shopping around here. There's even people from the 'cold region'! Where's that, you ask? I don't know myself: there's actually no town on Expel that could be in a cold region, and the only place with snowy peaks is an abandoned island with some ruins on it. There must be very small villages scattered around in that cold region, so small that they don't appear on the map, but it still bothers me that you can't visit there, because of the people you see around Lacour Castle wearing snow caps and such. It also bothers me when I see Rena and Celine's relatively skimpy dresses next to them: either our heroines are stoically enduring the cold, or the snow people must be really suffering the heat.

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I'm with Rena this time: Lacour Castle is so exciting... !
This isn't the only place in the game where translators show their punctuation prowess, but I must say nothing can possibly beat their capitalisation mastery.
It's a pity that the player cannot see what Rena and Celine are seeing right now, s/he could get even more excited.

Our heroes finally set foot out of Hilton and start strolling around the (pretty barren) fields of the new continent. However, since there's only three places you can go to from here (Lacour Castle, Linga and a military outpost), and since you can't do much anywhere but in the castle, we'll just go to the king straight away. It's a long way to Lacour Castle, but it's worth the trip: there are stronger enemies around on this land, which means more experience for us!

Unfortunately, getting to talk with the king of Lacour seems harder than we thought: first of all, Claude basically has to drag Rena and Celine away from their excitement (seriously, they look like they've never been out of the country, although there's nothing wrong with that); then there's this Tournament of Arms taking place at the castle, so there's a lot of confusion. Add in the fact that neither Rena nor Celine know anyone from here, and we can forget how easily we could get around in Cross. How's that, about Cross, you ask? I'll sum it up here: Rena knows the king of Cross since she was little, and Celine has some relationship with the prince; the latter you can only find out by going through certain Private Actions, to which we won't have access.

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Pretty funny way to say hi, huh? Actually, the whole scene has Claude walking near a room at the inn and overhearing Celine talking to herself; if you make Claude approach the room, he trips while saying that. It's funny because one would expect Claude to say 'Hi Celine!' first, and then fall to the ground, or something like that: instead, the line comes out at the exact same time. I think the exact same problem can be found in Rena version.

Celine is so exhausted from the 'identifying' session from before that she decides to rest at the inn; meanwhile Claude, after being laughed at by the music shopkeeper because of his passion for trumpets, is thinking about letting off steam by teasing some newlywed couple at the inn nearby. Not even imagining that no couple would ever dream of lodging at Hilton (poor Claude, he's just an Earthling, how could he have known?), he gets pissed, and is just about to leave, when suddenly he hears Celine's voice. Thinking things could get interesting, Claude eavesdrops the conversation of Celine with Celine (she probably has a double personality) about her gaining weight. Unfortunately, Claude trips on a perfectly smooth floor, and goes down with an inn-shaking thud! The English translators had tried their best to cover Claude's malicious intentions by replacing the 'thud' with a 'Hi Celine!', to make it seem like he was just trying to enter the room; but it was still too obvious. Celine notices the earthquake and spots Claude in the corridor before he can even attempt to flee. With a look on her face half inquiring half worried, she asks 'Did you overhear...?'. By simply looking at the Heraldic master her friend for one instant, Claude could tell a wrong answer could mean death: therefore, what better chance to leave this daunting task to the player? I'll let you imagine what could happen next.

And yes, I invented most of that above. What? I was trying to make our stay in the boring port town of Hilton a bit more interesting! Don't like it? ...Fine, next time we'll get straight to Lacour Castle.

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This is one of the Item Creation screens in the game menu: despite its name, Celine isn't trying to create anything, she's just using her newly acquired 'Identify' Specialty to analyze an unidentified medicinal herb they found in Cross Cave back then. Every time Celine fails on any Item Creation process, she'll say the above line: which makes sense if you're using the 'Cooking' Specialty and produce a Spicy Cake, for instance, but it doesn't if all you do is fail at identifying an item. Plus, the line itself, while perfectly fitting for the character, sounds funny anyway.

Well, here's a screen of the menu, specifically the screen that appears when you want to use a Specialty. On the upper left corner is the character chosen for the attempt at Item Creation, always in the 'walking' animation (this is basically everywhere in the menu), with the respective level for the current Specialty: the higher the level (10 is the max), the higher the chance of success. In case of failure, you may produce a useless item, an undesirable item (only with a certain Specialty), or nothing at all; in case of success, the item you'll get may depend on the base items used (cooking ingredients, raw materials, item to identify etc.), be generated at random (Machinery, Survival), or a combination of both. Regardless, an attempt will consume the eventual items required for the Specialty. There's a lot more variety in the Item Creation system that can be explained in these few words.

In the upper right box the item being worked on is shown, along with a short description; some of these are quite funny, but I may get back to it later, when I shall show the item screen and have enough variety of items to show. All items are shown as rotating 3D objects, which range from the very well presented type to the ugly polygonal mess type.

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This guy's supposed to speak with a weird accent, but most of what he says doesn't make any sense. The line "You no put it down in a place-a make-a painful feeling" sounds especially hilarious to me.

Since this is the first time on a new continent, the party decides to split up in a Private Action and go shopping in Hilton; while there's really nothing much to see, you might find something nice at the music and tool shops, as well as new skills at the Skill Guild (most towns have one, each with a set of 4 different skill sets). Claude is desperately trying to find a trumpet, his favorite instrument, but the music shop doesn't seem to have any.

I wanted to mention that when you cross the sea by ship to get here, you get to see the ship sailing from one port to the other on the world map; the bad part is that you'll have to watch that again if you plan on going back to Cross. Going back is actually not necessary if you proceed normally with the game, but if you want to see any Private Actions with characters you may recruit in Lacour, or even recruit a certain character, you'll have to. Which is what I always do.

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Pun intended? I definitely think so. FOL is the currency used on Expel: for the convenience of players, this currency is the only one used throughout the whole planet, the planet you'll get to in the second disc, and apparently many other planets as well (see other episodes of Star Ocean). Also, that yellow thing there looks definitely like a forklift to me... Not that I'm stealing lines from a character in the game or anything... Ok, I am, but I can't show you yet because that character can't be recruited yet.

Leaving Mars the morning after the rescue of kidnapped children, our heroes head towards the port town of Herlie and finally cross the sea to the continent of Lacour, Celine still tagging along to help her new friends with their quest. Herlie is a fairly uninteresting town: there's a gang of bandits led by Zand, the owner of a huge villa at the top of a hill, and he's related to a couple of Private Actions you can have here, one with Claude (only later) and one with Rena. Hilton, the port you land at in Lacour, is equally uninteresting, if not more; if you come back here again, you can also find a bunch of refugees from the other continent. As if the town wasn't already cramped enough before... Seriously, Hilton feels smaller than even Arlia.

Speaking of Arlia, I'm not sure if that name was a wilful mistranslation of the original name: in Japanese, the town is called 'A-ria' (long 'a'), which should be 'Aria' (air), a reference to the clean air Claude feels when he first got there. I'm saying I'm not sure because, while it's common in JRPGs to translate simple words in a slightly different way to make them sound more exotic, there's also the 'l/r' interchange issue... This is getting uselessly complicated, let's call it a day, ok?

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I believe this joke had become less effective due to the translation from Japanese to English, but I think it could have been handled better by the translators of the game. This scene made me laugh a little the first time, but it also had me wonder about how much time adventurers spend not bathing; it also had me wonder about how in most RPGs, which usually tell of a story that lasts very long, all the characters usually wear the same outfit every day. I know it's because

• it's easier for the developers
• it makes characters more recognizable
• nobody really pays attention to it too much
  

But sometimes it makes the virtual world a lot less credible.

Not much else happening at Celine's house after the last time: Eglas talks with Claude about his journey and about his feelings towards Rena. He also regrets to inform Claude that all the houses on Expel don't have bathrooms, so he may have to go to lake Col in order to have one... not really, but it wouldn't be surprising for there not being any bathrooms on this undeveloped planet. There's probably just one toilet in the world though, and you might have seen it several posts ago.

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I learned a new English word today: I didn't know 'wreckless' was an actual word, so I searched some online dictionaries, and to my surprise I found it. It's nevertheless misused in this sentence here, of that I'm sure.

After brutally killing the boss of the bandits (anything accomplished by performing a move called 'Head Splitter' must be brutal), Celine shows her great sense of duty by telling Claude that saving the children is more important than her father's health at the moment; luckily Rena and Dias, who show up shortly after that, seem to have already taken care of them. After a bit of Claude vs Dias verbal exchanges, the mercenary expresses his appreciation for Claude's strength, seeing how he managed to slay the boss of the bandits, before walking away and disappearing for the rest of the sequence. The group rushes back to Mars and finds out that Eglas, Celine's father, is still alive, although in critical condition because of the 'several Heraldic spells' he had been hit with (I don't think that boss ever used any spells, what gives?). Rena's healing powers save him from certain death, and he seems to be perfectly fine by the evening. As thanks you get to stay at Celine's house for the night and listen to some advice from Eglas regarding the Sorcery Globe.

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Maybe it's not the best of screenshots, but I wanted to show a battle screen; it actually looks a lot better than in the real game when filtered like this. What you can see here is Claude showcasing his mortal technique known as Head Splitter on the boss of the bantits in the Heraldry forest near Mars. Remember when I told you about the similarities between the planet Expel and Earth? Oh, you don't... Well, I jokingly mentioned that one of the few differences is gravity: you can tell by looking at how high Claude manages to jump in this screen. I think this special move is as close as you can get to a realtime version of the trademark 'Jump' ability of Dragoons in Final Fantasy games. An additional note: if you happen to control a character other than Claude in battle, be sure to disable Head Splitter as soon as he learns it, or else he'll start using only that move over and over until he runs out of MP (yeah, special moves use MP just like spells).

Claude and Celine confront the boss of the bandits, who has turned into some monster-like creature; unfortunately you can only see Claude in the screenshot, but it's no great loss. On the top of the screen you can view your characters' HP and MP; since it's always restated somewhere in every RPG, I think I'll mention that once a character's HP reaches 0 by taking too many hits, s/he falls lifeless on the ground, and if that character's relationship with other characters is high enough, you may hear them shout his/her name or say something like 'What have you done!?'. Pretty neat, huh? Fortunately, as is the case with most RPGs, a fallen character isn't dead and, assuming that the others win the battle, you can carry him/her around as if s/he was alright. Of course s/he will still be out of commission in the next battle until you provide some healing (by using specific items or spells), during or outside battles. A fallen character doesn't gain experience in battles, s/he just lays there in place doing nothing.

On the same screen you may notice an OK icon with ITEM under it: when a character uses an item in battle, this icon changes for a few seconds, and nobody can use items during that time. The hourglass icon next to it simply serves as a memo for when you can take action: when it's red, you can't move or act with your characters, generally because an instant spell is in execution. What's an 'instant spell', you ask? It's a spell that stops every action on screen when cast, for the duration of the entire animation; most spells in the game are like that, and unfortunately the most powerful ones are also the ones with the longest animations, which means waiting and doing nothing while they're unleashed. I hear that problem was solved in the PSP remake of the game.

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Yes, Claude is still being a prick, even if he's calmed down a bit; however, just minutes before this scene, he went as far as shouting "We have no friends!" (and I don't think he was trying to cover Rena and Dias). But I digress: Claude's line here, taken out of context, really makes no less sense than it does in the actual dialogue, it's a sort of non sequitur, in my opinion. Besides, the fact that he says "... Rena too" means two things: he still doesn't consider her his friend, and he shows hesitation in putting his trust on her. Which makes him look even more horrible (and funnier) to me.

The morning after that small argument between Claude and Rena (can it even be called that?), C&C set out to find the bandits who kidnapped the children of Mars in the forest; they can't help but notice that Dias and Rena have already left. You can encounter bandits in groups of 3 in some specific placel while you get deeper into the forest: at each encounter you can watch some short scenes mainly about Claude's jealousy. On an unrelated note, the bandits are pretty strong enemies at this point in the game, plus you can't rely on Rena to heal yourself; needless to say, if you play the Rena storyline this segment is way easier, because Dias is almost invincible in comparison to Claude, and because Rena is there just in case you dozed while fighting.

Towards the end Claude and Celine meet with one of the guys who was in the village the day before: he reveals to them as the boss of the bandits (it wasn't really obvious from the start, I'll give this game that much), by saying "The one who fell was your father" to Celine. That bastard! Of course this can only mean one thing: boss fight! That is, a scripted fight with a particularly strong enemy, compared with your current random encounters, where a different battle music plays: I don't think it fully applies here though, as I generally find the bandits to be more dangerous.

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Ok, this is the first time Claude starts acting like a prick; well, he wasn't really that kind with Ketil, but this is far worse. Probably because of badly disguised jealousy ("I saved Rena's life twice and all I get is lunch from her mother?!"), he behaves horribly every time Rena talks about Dias, a childhood friend of hers who she seems very close to. I mean, it's alright to be a bit jealous about a guy who apparently showed up in front of Rena after a long time yet she looks all concerned about him, but between being jealous and being possessive there's a world of difference. It wouldn't have been a problem to me if the player was at least given some choice in Claude's behaviour: but here you can do nothing but watch as this scene here in Mars village (and later on at Lacour Castle) unfolds itself. Besides, the player also has no choice but accept the focus on the Claude-Rena relationship, even if his/her preference goes to another couple.

We're finally back on track to the port of Herlie (one of the most uninteresting towns in the game along with Hilton), but the journey is a long one and the party decides to stop by the town of Mars to rest; and of course, if you decide to press on, you'll find out that a plot device... I mean, a particularly rough sea will prevent the ship to set sail. So Mars is Celine's hometown, and a village of Heraldry masters (magic users, if you don't recall), and apparently there's some commotion about a tragic situation: some bandits kidnapped all the children and request a ransom the village can't afford to provide (a mysterious book of spells or something). The elder thought about hiring a mercenary to save the kids Dias Flac, but since not everyone agrees with the decision of letting a village matter be handled by strangers, Celine proposes to let her and her friends (Claude and Rena, two other strangers, go figure) take care of the problem. Of course Dias gets pissed off by such a proposal (maybe because he needed the money they would give him to get to Lacour?) and goes back to the inn. Rena, being his childhood friend, tries to talk to him, and convinces him to try working together with the group (without telling the others first). Then the above scene happens.

If you want a clearer idea about what is going on in this sequence, you'll have to play through the Rena part of the game. In the end, Rena resolves to accompany Dias in the mission, while Claude and Celine go on their own, and Claude eats his own liver because of jealousy. You'll have to endure this for a while. It's worth noting that in this version of the story you can't recruit Dias, so you won't see him again in the seconf half of the game; but even in the Rena playthrough Dias doesn't offer a lot of dialogue, much less any Private Action, so story-wise he's not a huge loss.

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I guess this Private Action serves for a better show of Celine's character. On a side note: Celine is about 23, yet in some scenes she's often referred as 'old'; I know a bit about Japanese culture and the fact that a woman is considered already too old to get married at 24, but still...

I wanted to go as far back as Arlia with my hunt for Private Actions, just because I knew I could get an useful item from Celine. But Claude getting told we're going in the wrong direction by the other characters every time a Private Action is triggered in a place far from the next destination... that is fairly annoying, I must say. I'd like to elaborate a bit more on this scene here, but I think Celine has already stolen too much screen-time.

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Well, it's nice that Claude encourages the poor girl to follow her dreams, but really, was that last line necessary? There's noone listening, and it makes him look like... I don't know, a dork? 'I know your dreams will come true.' *serious look* Come on, if it wasn't for the friendship increase with Celine, I would have chosen to make Claude discourage her (which is a bit cruel), just to avoid reading that last sentence.

Last time we left out heroes in Salva, so Celine probably thought 'might as well buy some of Salva's famed jam'; Claude finds her waiting in front of the empty counter of the jam store, and kindly offers to go find the missing shopkeeper, Yuki, so she can buy something. Claude finds Yuki practicing her singing near the mine: she confides him her dream of becoming a singer, along with her insecurity because of her freckles (hmm, appearance being a big deal for a singer, where have I heard that before?). Claude, being the great gentleman, natural leader and Hero of Light he is, manages to convince her to hold on to her dream (unfortunately we shall never find out if she succeeded). Finally Yuki notices she left her shop and goes back to work, so Celine can get her jam and is grateful to Claude; everyone lives happy ever after.

Side note: all of the above is a Private Action, entirely optional, and whose outcome is influenced by a couple of your choices; you don't gain anything from it other than an improvement of Claude's relationship with Celine, so if you're not interested just don't bother doing it.

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This sentence doesn't make any sense to me, but I never noticed it when I played the game years ago; replaying it now makes me realize how many mistakes one can find scattered around. To be fair, though, Star Ocean 2 sports a really extensive amount of text, because of the storyline, numerous characters with alternative dialogues, Private Actions and side-quests: it's only natural that translators may have had a rough time with it. But that's the main reason I'm making these posts, so let's move on!

After Clik's unfortunate series of events, the group (that is, me) decides to go back and revisit previous towns; this is both because of their sense of duty in informing the king of Cross regarding the disaster and in seeing the refugees being welcomed in Salva, and because new Private Actions have opened up! As I might have noted before, Private Actions are a very good way of adding details on the story and characters without requiring the more straightforward players to experience them, while still providing nice, "tangible" bonuses now and then.

Since I've got some time to spare, I'll tell you that my favorite PAs all take place on the second planet: two of them happen in Fun City (and they're the funniest ones in my opinion), but you need to play with Rena for one of them, and the third one actually spans across multiple places, gives a lot of interesting (if a bit cliché, I think) information about your enemies, and makes one of the two characters you can recruit on the second planet a bit less of an afterthought. If you want to know more about the last one, I suggest you play the game (or the PSP remake) if you can, because it's not funny and thus I can't cover it within Funny Bits.

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Here's what happens if you try to get ahead of the game!
...Okay, this isn't actually funny, but I wanted to take a screenshot of the world map, and this is probably the best chance I had.

An earthquake strikes the port town of Clik, followed by a tsunami; Philia's prediction was pretty accurate I must say, too bad noone took it seriously. Luckily our heroes managed to escape in time, as well as the captain of the ship, Ketil and a bunch of other people. I wonder where Philia has gone to; actually, I don't, because I know where you can meet her again and, trust me, neither the place nor Philia's identity really make any sense, so let's just forget about her for now, alright?

The captain of the ship (whose name we don't know) kindly suggests Claude another route for the continent of El, that is a very 'Columbian' one; you should go to the port of Herlie and sail to the continent of Lacour, from where you may get the permission from the king to get a ship to El. It sounds like a very long trip, and unfortunately it won't be easy either.

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Maybe I should have put up a larger screenshot...

Where were we? Oh, that's right! Claude's wallet was indeed stolen by this blue-haired kid, named Ketil, who did it just to brag about it: it appears he was lonely because of his wealthy status and wanted attention. Claude gets the money back and decides to give him a good punishment: show them around town ('Seems a bit too easy to me', remarks Celine). Well, at this point you can go to several places and trigger some scenes with Ketil, of which this is probably the funniest; you can choose the character who'll be trying a weird dress, but Celine's is easily the best in many ways.

While you walk around in town, you may feel a light earth shock, prelude of what is soon to come. Other than that, once you've had enough of Ketil, you can dump him at the port with other two kids, after a short and very cliché scene about being friends, money and envious parents. The captain of the ship then informs you that the ship's ready to leave: it's finally time to set sail for the continent of El... But wait! Was that an earthquake?!